Indiscretions
by Roadstergal
Summary: A two chapter ficlet based on a comment Ironhorse makes in Among The Philistines.
1. Chapter 1

"Harrison?" 

Ironhorse punctuated his statement with a polite knock at Blackwood's office door. When the door failed to open, he knocked much more impolitely. The door persisted in its stubborn shut-ness. Ironhorse tested its handle, and finding that the door was unlocked, he opened it and strode in. "Harrison!" The man was late for dinner yet again, and while the other denizens of the Cottage might be content to let him miss a meal or two while he did whatever the hell it was he did in his office, Ironhorse was determined to instill a little discipline into the man.

Blackwood stood in the middle of the room on his left foot. His right foot was arched behind him, held in his right hand. His left hand was extended outwards for balance, and his head was tilted upwards. His eyes were closed and his mouth was open. If Ironhorse had seen something like this when he had first come to the Cottage, he would have gone for a straitjacket - but, he thought ruefully, a little time with the good Doctor had made him ease his definition of 'sane behavior' a bit.

"What is it, Colonel?" Blackwood asked, not opening his eyes. He was swaying slightly on his foot.

"Dinner has been served for some time, Blackwood. Are you coming down?" Ironhorse growled.

"Are you going to pick me up and carry me down if I don't come down on my own?"

Blackwood was definitely swaying, Ironhorse noted. He watched the man's left foot until the body that was perched atop it overbalanced, then caught Blackwood on his way to the ground. "I might just let you tumble down on your own. What are you _doing_?" he asked, as Blackwood regained his footing.

"Yoga!" Blackwood replied, shaking his arms and bouncing on his feet slightly. "It's a position that invites introspection and harmony with the world. I was just starting to feel harmonious when you interrupted me." Blackwood walked to his chair and plunked down in it, petulantly.

Ironhorse leaned back against a nearby table. "Enough harmony to tip you to the ground?" he snorted. "You are sillier than any other adult I know, Blackwood, and I have known some _good_ ones."

"Come now, Colonel - I thought the Native Americans were big into harmony with nature?"

"It's a way of life, not a way of hopping around on one foot," Ironhorse countered. Blackwood's New Age affectations smelled fairly strongly of bullshit to him, and he was not above saying so.

"I try to live in a way that's harmonious with nature - you know that." Blackwood pulled a pen from off of his desk and fiddled it in his hands. "But sometimes I need to push things a bit. I was trying to remember something that was just flitting around at the back of my consciousness." He waggled the pen near his ear, as if to demonstrate the motions of a wayward thought.

"And you didn't use the tuning fork?" Ironhorse teased gently.

Blackwood took the suggestion as a serious one. He shook his head. "I try to reserve the tuning fork for when I really _need_ it. This time, I was just trying to coax a thought from the back of my mind to the front of it. And it worked!"

"Great," Ironhorse replied, nodding. "Now will you come down to dinner?"

"Not quite." Blackwood pointed the pen at Ironhorse. "The thought involved you, my friend. You said, when you had checked up on Adrian's file, that he was cleaner than any of us."

"I did." Ironhorse's eyes narrowed. Was Blackwood trying to imply that Adrian's penetration of their security was _his_ fault? Well, it was, and Ironhorse had submitted a list of measures to General Wilson that he intended to implement, including mandatory radioactivity screens of all Cottage personnel. But it was not Blackwood's place to _chide_. "Are you implying that my check was not thorough?"

Blackwood's hands flew up in a deferential gesture. "God forbid! You're too thorough for _any_ of our good. No, I was just interested in what that implied."

Ironhorse folded his arms. He could not see where this was going. "Implied?"

Blackwood laughed. "Yes! Now, lord knows I know that _my_ file isn't clean. I've taken part in protests, written letters of complaint to the government, associated with foreign scientists, and joined a group or two in college that had an interesting political agenda. I bet Suzanne and Norton have done the same. But you?" Blackwood grinned. "Upright citizen, model officer in the Army? What on earth have _you_ done to make your record not as clean as a some meretricious dolphin scientist's?"

Ironhorse choked slightly, cleared his throat, and replied, firmly, "Youthful indiscretions." He was not about to go into what was _none_ of Blackwood's business. Blackwood did not help his case by using words that Ironhorse was unfamiliar with. It made him feel stupid, and he _hated_ feeling stupid.

Blackwood's mouth twisted. "Oh, come now, Paul, you can do better than that!"

_Oh_ - now _it's Paul_, Ironhorse thought. _When you _want _something out of me_. "Not a chance, _Harrison_. That's for me to know, and for you _not_ to find out."

"Was it really that bad?" Blackwood leaned over the desk. "If you make it seem too interesting, I'll go dig it up, you know."

Ironhorse stepped forward and rested his hands on the desk. "It's not bad. It's just _personal_, Harrison." He stared unblinkingly at Blackwood's too-eager green eyes.

Blackwood met his gaze for a moment, then dropped his own eyes and spread his hands. "None of my business? I can understand that." He stood up and clasped Ironhorse's shoulder. "Right. Shall we go to dinner, then?"

Ironhorse followed the pull of the hand on his shoulder, heading down to the dining room in Blackwood's tow. Well, his mission was accomplished - and considering Blackwood's eccentricities, much less painfully than he had any right to hope. Perhaps, he thought, it was possible to teach the man some discipline after all.


	2. Chapter 2

Not for the first time - by a long shot - Harrison Blackwood faced off against his conscience. 

He and his conscience had a tumultuous relationship, but it was one that was rather important to Blackwood. He typically deferred to it, but once in a while, he felt he had a good enough case to hold up against it.

This was one of those times.

His conscience told him very firmly that anything that Ironhorse had done in the past, and had assured Blackwood was unimportant to the mission and personal in nature, was utterly none of Blackwood's business. It was very firm on this point.

But, Blackwood countered, Ironhorse had felt no compunction about digging into _Blackwood's_ personal life - following him when he met up with Katja, digging into his own history with her. That was the same situation, wasn't it? He felt a little hurt that Ironhorse did not trust him enough to simply _tell_ him about the incident in question, but he kept that datum out of his battle with his conscience. It was not going to help his case.

Eye for an eye, Blackwood? his conscience shot back. Two wrongs don't make a right, and you _know_ that, it chided.

But is it really a wrong? he fumed. I'm the head of the project - it's my job to determine what's important and what isn't.

Rather dictatorial of you, Harrison, isn't it? his conscience countered. The Army cleared him, and it surely has stricter standards for appropriate behavior than you do.

Different, Blackwood insisted. Not stricter. _I_ don't think killing is acceptable behavior.

You don't think McCarthyism is acceptable behavior, either, his conscience sniffed. Just _whence_ comes this interest into Ironhorse's personal life, anyway?

Point and match to conscience, Blackwood decided, capitulating with bad grace. He started to untwine himself from the lotus position he had assumed on his office floor. With _that_ little matter decided, it was time to go over the new data on alien transmission signal strength that Norton had sent up.

An hour of reading did not see much progress. He had hoped that a little squaredown against his conscience would ease his mind, but it had not helped one bit. His morning run with Ironhorse, usually a source of some relaxation, had been unusually quiet and tense. As a result, he was unfocused and irritable. He wadded up an unhelpful piece of paper and threw it at the garbage can. It hit the rim and bounced off into a corner. He glared at it.

A knock that was too quiet and polite to belong to his team-members sounded at his door. "Yes, Mrs. Pennyworth?" he asked.

The door opened slightly. "General Wilson is here to see you, Harrison," she said.

"Tell him I'll be right there," Blackwood replied. Well, he wasn't getting anywhere scientifically, anyway. He stood, hunted down the errant wad of paper, and shoved it into the trash can with finality.

Mrs. Pennyworth served the two men tea and scones on the patio. General Wilson was just as paternal and jovial as always. Blackwood had asked McCullough in the past if this was deliberate, some kind of loyalty-enhancing facade - the good-cop to the lower-ranking officers' bad-cop. She had approached the subject with all of the dispassionate scientific detachment of a loving niece. "Oh, that's ridiculous. He's just a dear..."

"Ah, nobody makes a cup of tea like Mrs. Pennyworth," the general said with a pleased sigh. He visibly readjusted himself to business. "I hope you don't mind me coming by. The Colonel sent me a list of security measures he wants to implement in the light of current events. I agreed, but I wanted to run them past you, since you're the head of the project..."

Blackwood wondered exactly how much veto power he would have over any measures, but he appreciated the lip service, at least. He skimmed the list. It was in application-level detail, written in very straightforward language; Blackwood guessed that General Wilson had just handed on the list that Ironhorse had typed up in his painstaking manner. "It looks reasonable, but I'll have to give it a more detailed read-through later."

"Oh, of course," the General replied, taking a sip of tea. "Give me a call if there are any issues - implement them as given if not." He put down his cup and leaned across the table slightly. "That incident with the dolphin fellow really shook you folk up, didn't it?"

"A bit," Blackwood replied, feeling some puzzlement.

General Wilson shrugged. "Well, the Colonel was doing some digging on you folk right afterwards, trying to see if there was anything on you he had missed. I've never seen him so shaken, to be honest. Keep an eye on him, would you? He's a good man, but a little single-minded at times."

Blackwood assured the General that he would, then turned the conversation to small talk. While he was doing so, he took that bit of information about Ironhorse's behavior, jabbed it in his conscience's eyes, flipped the pesky thing over his shoulder, and pinned it to the mat until it cried Uncle. Blackwood could not wait until the General finished his tea, flipped his hat under his arm, shook Blackwood's hand, and made his farewells.

Once the General had pulled away, Blackwood hoofed it down to the basement. He glanced over at the biology lab. McCullough had the door closed and was poring over her notes. Drake looked up from his computer. "Heya, man, what's up?"

Blackwood leaned over Drake's shoulder. He muttered quietly into the man's ear, "Care to go on a little extracurricular fishing expedition?"

Drake glanced up at Blackwood. "What _are_ you talking about, Harrison?"

"Well," Blackwood licked his lips, "I believe there is something colorful in the good Colonel's past that is not obvious at first glance."

"And you want me to look this up _why_?"

Blackwood wondered if his conscience had been chatting with Norton when he hadn't been paying attention. "Well..."

Drake snorted out a giggle as something struck him. "So you can have something to hang over _his_ head when he tries to mess with your love life again?"

"Well, it was a thought." Blackwood grabbed this excuse gratefully.

Drake raised a hand loftily. "Say no more! I will be the enchanted shield for any more romances you want to get involved in. If there's anything out there, Norton Drake will find it!" He turned to his keyboard with a flourish. "And will firmly deny to the good Colonel any involvement in finding anything you use in the future."

Blackwood clapped Drake on the shoulder, then headed back up to his office. His conscience grumbled at him quietly, but he found that he could face the data awating analysis with a much clearer head than he had that morning.

He had done about two hours of reasonably productive work when the intercom rang. He answered it. Drake, sounding more subdued than Blackwood would have expected, said, "Hey, boss, I have something for you. Why doncha come on down?"

McCullough was exiting the elevator as Blackwood was getting on it. She rubbed her head. "God, I am exhausted!" she sighed. "Do you think we can do something about soundproofing my room? The noise Norton makes on his keyboard drives me _crazy_! And his music! He _won't_ turn that godawful _noise_ down!" She stomped off towards the kitchen, waving her arms, not waiting for a relpy.

As he rode down, Blackwood made a mental note to check back on her when she was in a better mood and see if she actually cared. After a day in her lab, _everything_ bothered her - Norton's laugh, Blackwood's tuning fork, the noise of Ironhorse's boots on the floor.

Drake was tapping his teeth with a pen when Blackwood stepped off of the elevator. "So, you found something?"

"Yeah," Drake told the monitor, thoughtfully. "I had to do some digging, too."

Blackwood paused. "Well?"

"Ever heard of a company called Kerr-McGee?" Drake asked, turning to face Blackwood. Blackwood nodded. "Well," Drake continued, "apparently Ironhorse was one of three kids that were picked up for attempted sabotage to the place in 1974. He and the other two got picked up by the cops when a night security guard saw them. They were all a little tanked up. They were all underage, too, and didn't get around to actually doing much, so this didn't end up on their criminal record." He shrugged. "Not exactly what I expected to dig up, to be honest."

Blackwood rubbed his mouth. "Not exactly what I expected you to dig up, either. Erm," he rubbed his mouth more fiercely, as if the friction would somehow lend inspiration to his mental gears, which it didn't, "forget I asked, all right?"

"Forgotten already!" Drake chirped, turning back to the computer.

Blackwood stepped onto the elevator again. Yes, he remembered Kerr-McGee, and he remembered Silkwood's death; he tried to think about what it would have been like to have actually lived in the middle of all of that as a young boy. Especially a young boy with as much respect and love for the land as Ironhose had. Personal, indeed.

Blackwood's conscience leapt up from the mat, tackled him, and gave him a good pummeling. Which, he had to admit as he sat down heavily at his desk, he very much deserved. He felt quite properly embarrassed, and quite properly a schmuck.

He could not be entirely unhappy he had asked, however. After all, he now knew a bit more about the enigmatic Colonel - something real, something humanizing, something that could let him care about the man a little more as a man, not just as the Army unit Ironhorse was determined to present himself as.

Blackwood just hoped that his conscience never got its hands on _that_ little tidbit.


End file.
